


Midnight Snack

by atenaglory



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-19 10:37:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7357867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atenaglory/pseuds/atenaglory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After making her nightly rounds of the ship, Shepard takes a break in the kitchen to contemplate her feelings about recent battles. She's joined by Garrus, who can't sleep because of his own worries.</p><p>EDIT: also on tumblr: (http://atenaglory.tumblr.com/post/149078407099/midnight-snack)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Midnight Snack

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write a little more but to be honest, just this much was so embarrassing that I called it a day.
> 
> This has a few different themes of shakarian that I wanted to explore. Also, I've been thinking about a scene in the Normandy kitchen at night for like a month so I finally made my dream come true.

With the exception of perhaps Miranda, who worked tirelessly to make sure that things were constantly running smoothly, Shepard tended to work the latest of everyone on the Normandy SR-2. There was always work to do off the battlefield, from piles of paperwork to meetings that dragged on and on, and as the commander, Shepard felt the need to do all of her work promptly to set an example for her team. This often meant examining datapads and corresponding with any allies that she had made or managed to salvage ties with well into the Normandy’s night cycle.

Because she regularly stayed up late, she tended to do her nightly rounds after everyone had gone to sleep, or retired to their rooms for the night. She was not particularly light of foot, so she crept around the ship in her pajamas and socks. At night, with only the emergency lights on and nobody around, the ship felt like a different world. It was chilly, too, although that might have simply been because of how she was dressed, and the lighting gave everything a somewhat ghostly atmosphere. She loved her ship, and it always felt like she was seeing a new side of it that no one else was allowed to see. The glowing red lights of various doors on the ship, indicating that each crew member was no longer available for the day, acted as dim markers, adding a little bit of light to her path.

Shepard had a method for her rounds at night. During the day, she could go anywhere she pleased, but night required care so as not to disturb anyone’s rest. She started in the CIC. She would only double check to see that the Galaxy Map was shut off and that EDI was alright minding the ship for the night and had not found anything strange going on in the ship. She made sure that Joker had gone to bed, something Joker had learned to stop fighting a while before. As wary as he was of EDI, he let himself be persuaded to allow her to mind the ship during the night cycles. He said that he was “gettin’ too old for 24-hour shifts and sleeping in the pilot’s seat anyway,” but Shepard still liked to make sure that he didn’t “forget” to go to bed.

Shepard would usually give the cargo bay a once-over before heading to Engineering. Her time in the cargo bay was more or less the only time she spent there during the day, so she would often take a moment to just _be_ , before poking around to make sure that there were no stragglers or anything out of place. In Engineering, if the lights to the lockable doors were red, Gabby and Kenneth were gone, and Tali had called it a night, all Shepard had to do was quietly confirm that there were no abnormalities before heading up to the Crew Deck. Sometimes she had to force an engineer to bed, which was part of the reason that she saved the Crew Deck for last.

Finally, she would peek around the Crew Deck, making sure each door was locked and there was no one lingering when they should be resting. After confirming this, she would sometimes spend a little bit of time in the kitchen. She had a stash of snacks in one of the cupboards that she’d occasionally indulge herself with, and tonight was the perfect night for such a treat.

They were now on their way out of the Hawking Eta cluster after having picked up the Reaper IFF. Shepard hadn’t thought a lot about that mission just yet, but it hadn’t been fun. It wasn’t the husks or anything. Shepard had grown used to those, horrible as they were. No, it was the “even a dead god can dream” part that got to her. She opened a bag of chips, hoisted herself up so that she was sitting on the kitchen counter, and began to contemplate what she had witnessed.

She thought, while staring absently into the darkness. The researchers that had been working on the Cerberus ship had started to lose their minds. Was it indoctrination? She remembered Saren, who hadn’t even realized what had happened to him until Shepard had forced him to see. By then it was too late, and he had understood that. She would never forget the sight of him putting his gun to his head. The Cerberus workers had endured a similar fate. To think that even a dead Reaper could have those kinds of effects on people. Shepard's mind traveled back to the inside of the Reaper. She thought of the waves of husks. Those had been Cerberus workers. People. _Humans_. The very people in the logs she’d seen. She had killed them all. She then recalled what had happened after Saren had pulled the trigger. Sovereign had turned Saren’s corpse into a husk, as a last attempt to defeat Shepard and the Alliance. Shepard had been forced to kill him, too, immediately after seeing him kill himself. She had hardly been Saren’s number one fan, but she could never get over the feeling that he hadn’t deserved _that_. He had been turned into a puppet and killed himself to escape that fate, only to have his corpse turned into a puppet. The Reapers were sick. They had to be stopped.

The sound of a door quietly sliding open to her left brought her back to reality.

The dimly lit interior of the Normandy calmed her down as it came back into focus. She once again became aware of the comfortable chilliness of the ship.

“Fancy seeing you here,” Garrus said.

She looked over at him strolling towards her from the Main Battery.

“Trouble sleeping?” She reached down for another chip, and knitted her brow when she realized the bag was empty. Seeing this, Garrus chuckled softly.

“I could ask you the same thing.” He leaned back against the counter beside her.

“I’m always up this late. No rest for the wicked.”

“Is that so? No wonder I can’t sleep.”

“Hm,” Shepard frowned up at him. “Penny for your thoughts?”

“What?”

“What’s bothering you? I’ve never seen you on my nightly rounds, and you did just say you can’t sleep. Something must be wrong.”

“I’ve just got a lot on my mind.”

“I’ve got all night, Garrus. I’ve got until the IFF is installed.”

“I was thinking about Sidonis.”

Shepard paused. She wasn’t sure if Garrus wanted to have this conversation. She had to be careful. Although they had dealt with Sidonis, they had never really discussed the full situation. Shepard had followed up with Garrus directly after persuading him to let Sidonis live, even though he had asked not to talk about it, but even that conversation was brief. She decided that, although it may still be a delicate subject for him, she should take this opportunity to talk to him about it one more time.

“You know, you never really told me the full story. I know you’ve given me an overview, but I mean the _full_ story.”

“What’s there to tell?” His tone was a little sharp. He was already getting defensive. Still, Shepard pressed.

“I left you in C-Sec and found you on Omega after hearing that you’d dropped off the map. All I know is that you had a team and then you lost that team.”

“You _died_ , Shepard. That’s the full story.” Shepard’s expression tightened on the word “died,” but Garrus didn’t pause. “I was in C-Sec, back to square one with all the bureaucracy and red tape, now with the added frustration of knowing you were out there somewhere doing things the right way. And then you weren’t. And as soon as you were properly out of the picture, the Council went into overdrive trying to cover up the Reapers. Anderson tried, but he was alone. So I left. I couldn’t take the bullshit anymore. I couldn’t take knowing that you were gone, and I couldn’t take the Council’s disgusting disrespect after you’d saved their asses. I went to take justice into my own hands. I went to do some real good, like you had been doing.

“But I screwed up. I didn’t listen to my team when they said that they needed to slow down. When we had gotten so much good done in Omega, it still wasn’t enough for me. I was chasing your ghost and trying to escape from your memory at the same time. And my poor judgment cost my team their lives.”

Shepard recalled a message she had received from the wife of one of Garrus’ teammates after picking him up on Omega. It seemed that even now he blamed himself for everything that had happened to his team. Garrus was a good leader. She hoped she could help him see that sooner or later.

“Garrus, you did good work on Omega.” She pushed herself off of the counter and turned to face him. “Those gangs were awful, and your judgment and mistakes don’t change the fact that _they’re_ responsible for what happened to your men. Not you. You and your team did what no one else had the balls to do, what no one else _could_ do. And I’m sure they were damn proud of that.”

Garrus remained quiet, staring into space while mulling over her words. She turned to the garbage bin and slowly moved to throw away her empty bag of chips. Had her words been enough? She lingered by the bin for a moment before turning back to face him. He was looking at her now with what seemed like reverence, or admiration. Maybe the speech had worked.

She noticed for the first time that he was wearing clothes, rather than armor. They were black with some silver detailing, and seemed quite comfortable. His pajamas? He continued to watch her, and she suddenly felt a little smaller dressed in her tank top and sweat pants, which were much different than the armor or even civilian clothing that she usually gave those kinds of speeches in.

“What about you?” He prompted her as she walked back over and sat next to him in her original spot. “I didn’t think midnight snacks were part of the commander’s nightly rounds.”

She smiled, but, remembering what she had been thinking about, her gaze fell to the ground.

“'Even a dead god can dream.’”

Although Garrus had kept looking at her until that moment, he broke his gaze now, staring into the darkness of the ship.

“That was rough, huh.”

“We killed the whole team of researchers, Garrus.”

“They were husks. If they had any consciousness left, they would have been begging to die.”

“So, what, I did them a favor?” Her tone had gotten sharp and accusing, though her voice was low, and she took a deep breath. Though she was his friend, she was still Garrus’ commander. Even after hours. It wasn’t good for her to show this kind of emotion, and it was even worse for her to be taking it out on him.

He was looking at her again.

“Shepard, you’re allowed to be upset, you know.”

Hypocrite. She stayed silent for a moment.

Then, with a quiet intensity, “That Reaper toyed around with their minds and it wasn’t even alive. I have to stop them, no matter what. They’re worse than monsters. If I don’t stop them, the entire human race might end up husks, just like the Protheans. Even if it means working with Cerberus until I die again. I’ll—!”

The feeling of a rough, large hand closing around hers stopped her mid-thought. She came back, once again, to the chilly, dimly lit Normandy. She realized that her hands had clenched into fists. Her face relaxed as she became aware that she had been glaring.

His hand, though rough and unfamiliar, was warm, and so comforting. Everything felt bizarrely dreamy. The Normandy at night had always felt like reality had been altered, but now, beside Garrus with her hand underneath his, it felt like a totally different world. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

Then, opening her eyes, and looking up at him, she reached up with her free hand and touched his face. He inhaled, holding her gaze. Their fingers intertwined. Despite the differences, it felt to both of them as though their hands fit together perfectly. Silently, without breaking eye contact, Garrus moved to stand in front of her, standing against the counter between her legs, which were parted slightly. He put his free hand on the small of her back, and bent down, still looking into her eyes, to rest his forehead against hers. It had never registered until now just how blue his eyes were.

All of her concerns had melted away by now, and Shepard was entirely consumed by the feeling of being in her dark ship in Garrus’ arms. The comforting chilliness of the ship had been replaced by Garrus’ warmth surrounding her. It was even more comfortable this way. Removing her hands from his hand and face, she reached up to stroke the back of his neck. He closed his eyes, and she felt a rumbling from his chest. She closed her own eyes, tilted her chin up, and pressed her mouth against his. A risk, considering their difference in physiology. He made a noise of surprise, but she felt him pull her closer. After a second, he chuckled quietly against her mouth, but in response to that she stroked his neck again, causing him to inhale sharply. She pulled her face away slightly and peeked up at him. He was looking at her, eyes only half open. He ran one hand down her arm, from her shoulder to her elbow, and let his hand rest there, cupping her elbow. His rough palm felt nice against her skin. And so _warm_. She shivered anyway.

“Shepard,” he said in a low, gentle voice that drove her wild. She dropped her head and let it rest on his chest. “This doesn’t change anything, you know.”

“What?” She snapped her head back up, suddenly panicked. His voice was playful, but since she wasn’t quite sure what was going on to begin with….

“The night before the Omega 4 Relay, and not a second sooner.”

She exhaled, relieved, and grinned.

“We have the IFF. It won’t be much longer,” she said with that teasing lilt in her voice. “But your self-control is truly admirable. I can respect that.”

“I want it to be perfect, Shepard.”

 _It will be. It’s you and me. Nothing could go wrong._ She wanted to say those things, to reassure him, but she couldn’t seem to find her voice anymore. Instead, she wrapped her arms around his neck and rested her head against his.

“Garrus,” she whispered. “Thank you for coming back.”

He held her close with both arms now, embracing her tightly as though she would disappear if he let go.

“That’s my line, Shepard.”


End file.
